This week’s edition of James Clear’s newsletter is on fire. I want to highlight almost everything, but let me share a couple things that grabbed my attention.
On the superpower of focus:
“What looks like a talent gap is often a focus gap. The “all-star” is often an average to above-average performer who spends more time working on what is important and less time on distractions. The talent is staying focused.”
On discipline and creativity:
Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky explains that discipline precedes inspiration:
“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.”
Source: Letter to Nadezhda von Meck (1878)
And this quote made me think about how bloody revolution often leads to bloody revolution, but a revolution of peace — the kind of nonviolent revolutions led by Jesus, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr. — start within us.
American novelist Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us that change always begins by taking responsibility for how you live:
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
Source: The Dispossessed (1974)
Anyway, go sign up for his newsletter if you haven’t already.